Panda Express’s Founders Built a $7 Billion Empire. Now They’re Helping 55,000 Employees Become Homeowners

For the founders, enabling their employees to achieve such a major milestone is critical to their mission. Here’s how they do it.

Peggy Cherng and Andrew Cherng, Co-Founders, Co-Chairs, Co-CEOs of Panda Restaurant Group. Photo:

Panda Express built an empire out of a single family’s restaurant. Now its founders are focused on helping their employees build something of their own.

Privately held and employing around 55,000 people, the Chinese food chain generates roughly $7 billion in annual sales and has grown into America’s largest Asian restaurant brand, with more than 2,500 locations across 49 states and a presence in 12 countries.

Behind that growth are two co-founders whose own

Behind that growth are two co-founders whose own paths to the U.S. weren’t so different from the immigrant employees they’re now trying to help. Andrew Cherng was born in China and raised in Taiwan and Japan before immigrating to the U.S. in 1966. Peggy Cherng was born in Myanmar and grew up in Hong Kong.

The two met at the University of Missouri and went on to become co-CEOs together, opening their first Panda Express in Glendale, California, in 1983. The restaurant initially launched as a more relaxed, faster-paced version of Panda Inn—the full-service Chinese restaurant Andrew started with his father roughly a decade earlier.

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Andrew told Inc. that the company’s mission has always extended beyond building a successful restaurant chain. “Building Panda Restaurant Group for the past 50 years has been our American Dream come true, and we are deeply committed to helping our associates achieve their own,” he said. “Homeownership is a major milestone for many of our team members, so we proactively equip them with the tools to reach it.”

Yet, over the past decade, that American dream of homeownership has slipped out of reach for millions of middle-class families. According to Gallup, U.S. homeownership has averaged just 61 percent since 2012, down from 70 percent between 2001 and 2011.

Source: www.inc.com